Vilest of Hearts
by quiet-little-wallflower
Summary: Whatever it was though that beat the steady rhythm in his chest, it definitely broke in half the moment he shook hands with Clove, his prize that he'd worked so hard for, it broke into tiny shards that pierced his lungs the second he realized he might lose her.


She was so small, so slight, with a waist he was sure he could wrap both hands around and have his fingers touch easily.

He often thought about how easy it would be to break her, how fragile she'd feel in his arms. It was so tantalizing. He'd never wanted someone so much in his whole life.

The fact that she at first wanted nothing to do with him at all made her that much more desirable.

She kept to herself in training, not socializing with the others, but that never stopped them talking about her.

"She's only twelve you know."

"Her dads a drunk"

"Apparently he beats her."

"I heard she cut up Argus Kofsky's cat and left it on his front porch."

"She never misses those targets you know. Never"

Everything he heard about her he made a point of remembering, and gradually he knew so much about her, a mixture of slander and truths that he was something of an expert. He watched her. He knew which hand she threw best with despite being ambidextrous, could explain in great detail the flicking motion her hand made as it let go of the knives, fingers curling back against her palm, smug smile spreading across her face as the Knife hit home.

the few times she actually looked at him, those dark eyes piercing his own, well he just revelled in the contact and wanted to snap her in half when it was broken.

The first time she talked to him she'd only just turned thirteen. Still so small, still absolutely enchanting.

"You've been watching me." she'd stated one day as they both stood at the target station, her voice almost bored.

He'd thought about saying something, tried to recall the bevy of clever sentences he'd strung together for just this occasion but she beat him to the punch. She'd ran one of her knives down his chest to his navel, hadn't even looked at him, eyes unfocused and had said. "I really like it. I really like it a lot."

Before he even had the time to fully process what had just passed between them she'd already disappeared, leaving his chest tingling from the knife's touch and his heart twisting with both rage and unabated desire.

Within a week he somehow managed to convince her to come back to his house.

His mother had frowned as the girl had wandered through the hall way and up to his room, had commented that she was a bit of a 'Lolita'. Cato hadn't even bothered acknowledging the remark, that was both a ball of concern and snideness. He'd just scowled and followed the waif like creature up the hall and into his room, careful to shut the door behind him.

They never really did much talking.

When they did it was all about the games. They were indeed kindred spirits of the vilest kind. She spoke so comfortably about how she'd slice someone open, about how she couldn't wait till the day her knife sliced into the flesh of a live opponent and not a rubber dummy. Cato would prattle on about how he didn't know whether he'd want to make it quick or prolong the deaths, to which she'd always protest he'd kill them quickly. "You don't like to wait. You want it all right away. You can't wait."

She made him wait, and it was infuriating.

All he wanted was those clothes off her body, her skin pressed to his, her voice so soft and deadly moaning his name in his ear. But each and every time he got close, each and every time he managed to slip a hand underneath her bra or too far up her thigh she'd end the game, she'd push him aside and leave without a word. He could have pushed her back down, could have forced her to stop the games, to cut the crap and just give him what he felt was owed, but see it wasn't right like that. That would be cheating. Cato was a great many things, few of them good, but he wasn't a cheater. He won his prizes fair and square.

By the time he got his prize he was seventeen and she was fourteen going on fifteen, but it was well worth the wait.

For them it was like a game, both desperately trying to come out the winner. She'd bite into his neck and rake her hands down his back, leaving bright red parallel lines across his shoulder blades that all the other boys saw and gawked at in the changing rooms. He left her with bruises on her shoulders, her chest, her thighs, places only he could see, but enough to leave his mark, to prove she was his and only his. Just as he was hers.

They'd almost always lay in a tangled mess afterwards and she'd rest her head on his heaving chest and tell him he was Perfect, her perfect opponent and that she couldn't wait for the real fight.

In this way they often joked about how they'd kill one another, but never even really considered it a possibility. He was due to volunteer years before she was, they'd never get the chance. He would go in with Arianna Odin and she with Lukas Garrod. They both often went into great detail about how they'd kill their future district partners.

He wanted to cut Arianna's head clean off, let her own blood stain her blonde hair crimson. Clove was of course even more theatrical, she wanted to pin her partner down, cut off his fingers and make him choke on them. Cato chastised her for the impracticality of it all, but she'd just smile and say "I'm not going for practical. I'm going for memorable. That's the least he deserves."

Neither of them was prepared for what happened on reaping day.

The boys are almost always called out first in district two. The male volunteers were always the most competitive. Before the escort had even managed to finish reading the chosen male's name out Cato had screamed out his objection and pushed and shoved his way onto the stage, overflowing with glory and pride.

Nothing could have spoiled his moment in the spot light.

Except you see, something did.

He practically went into shock when Clove's name was pulled from the reaping bowl and its more than likely that he did when not a single voice rose up in objection. Not one. The world was silent and all Cato could see was horrible black.

Cato had never been all too sure whether he had a heart. Sure, he knew all too well that something inside his chest was pumping the blood through his body at approximately seventy two beats a minute, but he was almost certain whatever it was didn't harbor any of those things like love, devotion and compassion inside it. He just wasn't wired that way. He was sure of it.

Well, pretty sure anyway.

Whatever it was though that beat the steady rhythm in his chest, it definitely broke in half the moment he shook hands with Clove, his prize that he'd worked so hard for, it broke into tiny shards that pierced his lungs the second he realized he might lose her.

It made him feel weak, but he didn't care.

Like always they didn't talk much. Not on the train, not in the apartment, not after they clawed and bruised each other's flesh in the middle of the night. Through training she kept to herself and he humoured the blonde girl who oozed sexuality and self-confidence but really was all vulnerability, a sad scared girl hiding behind a pretty face.

When they finally did speak properly, the night after the interviews, it was Cato who broke the void and let the words flow, disrupting the pattern where he played follow the leader to her whims.

"I can't kill you."

Those four words hung in the air above them for an almost unbearable amount of time before she finally spoke up. She pushed her hand through the sheets and intertwined it with his own before saying so matter of factually, as if it was something not even worth saying,

"Me either. I won't."

It was a lie though you see, because she eventually would kill him.

No, not of her own accord, that wasn't ever a possibility. In her own dark twisted little heart (for she knew she had one, evil and twisted as it was) there was one soft corner of red left, and that all belonged to him. She had no intentions of giving up those last few shreds of humanity, regardless of the fact that in all truth they belonged to another. No, Clove could never have killed him.

But she did all the same, because she stupidly allowed herself to die and leave him all alone to fend for himself in a world that had for him ended up only revolving around her.

The very centre of his awful universe had completely disappeared.

In the end, The Hunger Games was no longer worth playing for him. The prize at the end was not worth nearly as much as the one he lost. The waif of the girl wandering down his hall way, his Clove, the Lolita. That was the only prize that had really mattered.

His canon sounded two days after hers, but it was far too delayed. He'd died along with her, he'd died with her in his arms. His heart had still been beating, his body still functioning, but all that had made Cato, the very core of him, his soul, no, that was all gone.

Because he was hers and she was his, and that was all that had really mattered in the end.

That's all that really ever mattered.

* * *

**A.N:** Urgh this is so drabbly and disjointed. Why do I write Clato at five in the morning? because I'm an insomniac that's why.

so umm, if you read it, tell me what you think. really, I love to hear from you.

i really do.


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